1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an integrated payment scheme using Near Field Communication (NFC) and a mobile terminal using the same, and, more particularly, to a method of integrally processing various types of payment means in a contactless scheme using NFC and then performing payment.
2. Description of the Related Art
The present invention relates to a payment scheme and a system for storing coupons, related to various types of benefits applied to a payment, such as coupons, membership cards, stamps and point accumulation which are published from stores and franchises, in an Integrated Circuit (IC) Chip (or smart card) and a coupon server, respectively, the IC chip and the coupon server being connected with each other, so that the coupons are integratedly applied when a payment is actually performed.
Generally, benefit means applied to a payment, such as coupons, has been published as a means for providing a discount benefit to customers in order to promote sales in various types of stores such as department stores, discount stores, family restaurants, and shopping malls, and such a benefit means applied to a payment has been used offline. However, with the recent explosive development in the Internet infrastructure, online electronic commerce has gradually increased, with the result that online is closely connected to offline, so that multipurpose coupons which can be used both on and offline tend to be activated in such a way as to publish identity information, such as a coupon serial number, in addition to coupons which are simply printed on paper.
However, there are problems of inconvenience because such a coupon should be carried to be used in the state of printed matter or material printed out using a Personal Computer (PC) by a user in the case of offline, and the user should remember or record the provided coupons one by one and then use the coupons.
Further, when coupons published from a store along with an independent membership system or a discount system published form a franchise are both in place, it is troublesome for a customer to provide each printed matter and card in order to apply the discount benefit. Furthermore, it is difficult for customers to recognize all the discount benefits which are applied to a corresponding product and it is bothersome for a seller to explain the discount benefits individually to customers. Therefore, there are rising problems of the omission, forgery, falsification, and illegal use of discount benefits which can be enjoyed by a customer.
Meanwhile, with the development of wireless communication technology and Information Technology (IT), the number of mobile terminals supplies has increased and the development of intelligent mobile terminals (or, smart phones) has been activated, so that provision of various types of additional services using IC Chips (or smart cards), which are published by a communication service provider and provided to users in order to use the user authenticate function and the roaming function of each mobile terminal, is on an uptrend.
Therefore, studies have been conducted on a method of storing discount benefit means in an IC chip so that a user conveniently uses the discount benefit means when a payment is performed using coupons published from many various stores in such a way as to use wireless communication technology, IT technology, mobile terminals carried by almost all users, or a smart card infrastructure.
Further, with the popularization of online coupon publication, a method for storing electronic coupons in a mobile terminal has risen. For example, a customer may actively access a content server provided by a mobile communications company and download an electronic coupon via a communication network, or a store which wants to publish a coupon may publish electronic coupons in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) messages via the server of the communications company.
However, such type of electronic coupon publication is inconvenient because a customer should directly access a specific server and download a coupon, and because it takes a long time to obtain the corresponding coupon.